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Teg was not through. “Do I have it right, daughter? Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, formation of that self demands the utmost care and attention?”
Standing at Sheeana’s window in the early morning, Odrade had watched a seabird move against the desert background. It winged its way northward, a creature completely out of place in that setting but beautiful in a profoundly nostalgic way because of it.
No man, barring the damned Kwisatz Haderach himself and his Tyrant son, had ever known the particulars of this Bene Gesserit secret. Both of those monsters had felt the Agony. Two disasters! No matter that the Tyrant’s Agony had worked its way inward a cell at a time to transform him into a sandworm symbiote (no more original worm, no more original human). And Muad’Dib! He dared the Agony and look what came of that!
They continued to stare at her but they had heard. Become too conservative and you were unprepared for surprises. That was what Muad’Dib had taught them, and his Tyrant son had made the lesson forever unforgettable.
Fish Speakers, that was the revelation the Bene Gesserit absorbed with fascination. They had suspected, but Murbella gave them confirmation. Fish Speaker democracy became Honored Matre autocracy. No more doubts. “The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority,” Odrade called it, her voice exultant. “Downfall of democracy. Either overthrown by its own excesses or eaten away by bureaucracy.”
First, a Civil Service law masked in the lie that it was the only way to correct demagogic excesses and spoils systems. Then the accumulation of power in places voters could not touch. And finally, aristocracy.
Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even spoils systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of violence. Beware when Civil Service and Military join hands!
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
Honored Matres could be analyzed almost out of reality, but the actual confrontation would be played as it came—a jazz performance. She liked the idea of jazz although the music distracted her with its antique flavors and the dips into wildness. Jazz spoke about life, though. No two performances ever identical. Players reacted to what was received from the others: jazz.
Ixians displayed a Hogbenesque attitude toward their science: that political and economic requirements determined permissible research. That said the innocent naivete of Ixian social dreams had become the reality of bureaucratic centralism—a new aristocracy. So they were headed into a decline that would not be stopped by whatever accommodation this Ixian party made with Honored Matres.
Teg had no explanation for what he had found in himself under the stresses of survival on Gammu. Physical speed that drained his flesh and an ability to see no-ships, to locate them in an image field like a block of space reproduced in his mind.
This brought the orange glare. “You may try to understand us but we have no need to understand you.” “Both of us come from societies of women.” “It is dangerous to think of us as your offshoots!” But Murbella’s evidence says you are. Formed in the Scattering by Fish Speakers and Reverend Mothers in extremis.
Blind in a hostile universe. And there was why the Tyrant had preserved the Sisterhood. He knew he only gave us the path without direction. A paper chase laid down by a jokester and left empty at the end. A poet in his own right, though.
She was left with images, an eerie afterglow: Teg sprawled on the floor of that Honored Matre aerie. Odrade staring in shock.
Odrade lay on the floor in front of Elpek, who obviously had chosen sides without hesitation. The twisted position of Odrade’s neck and flaccid appearance of her body said she was dead. “She tried to interfere,” Elpek said.
“I bring Futars to attract Handlers. Honored Matres fear a biological weapon from the Scattering that made vegetables of them. Handlers may be the source.”
Idaho watched his projection. There they were: the old couple in their garden setting! He saw the net shimmering in front of them, the man gesturing at it, smiling in round-faced satisfaction. They moved in a transparent overlay that revealed ship circuits behind them. The net grew larger—not lines but ribbons thicker than the projected circuits. The man’s lips shaped words but there was no sound. “We expected you.”
“We’re an unidentifiable ship in an unidentifiable universe,” Idaho said. “Isn’t that what we wanted?”
Can’t you see what she intends? The Missionaria scheme! Oh, more than that. It’s the next phase: Muad’Dib to Tyrant to Honored Matres to us to Sheeana . . . to what? Can’t you see it? The thing is right here at the lip of your thoughts. Accept it as you would swallow a bitter drink. Murbella shuddered. See it? The bitter medicine of a Sheeana future? We once thought all medicines had to be bitter or they were not effective. No healing power in the sweet. Must it happen, Dar? Some will choke on that medicine. But the survivors may create interesting patterns.
Daniel chuckled. “That would’ve been funny. They have such a hard time accepting that Face Dancers can be independent of them.” “I don’t see why. It’s a natural consequence. They gave us the power to absorb the memories and experiences of other people. Gather enough of those and . . .”
